Reinventing My 50s: 12-Step Programs & Self-Awareness: How I Lead My Life on Purpose with Barb Nangle!

“Living your life on purpose” – that’s the guiding principle of my guest, Barb Nangle. 

At 57 years young, she’s reimagined her life to create more joy, happiness, and love. 

Barb embodies the characteristics of a Reinvention Rebel – she’s brave, follows her passions, has clarity about her purpose, and unapologetically focuses on achieving her goals and dreams.  

But, of course, it wasn’t always that way. 

Life is a journey and Barb has done her fair share of navigating challenges to get to where she is today.  Through several life-changing events – from employment changes to her experiences in 12-step recovery programs, she’s channeled the ups and downs into new opportunities and renewed enthusiasm for life.

Connect with Barb:
Website: https://www.higherpowercoachingandconsulting.com/

Fragmented to Whole Podcast: www.fragmentedtowhole.com

Instagram: @HigherPowerCoaching

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Thanks for listening!

Kick your midlife fears and uncertainty to the curb and start your Reinvention Rebels journey today. Learn about my audio program, Midlife Reinvention From The Inside Out: 8 Essentials to Greenlight Your Life.

Midlife women ready to reinvent themselves start with being curious about what's possible. Download my free audio, 5 Questions to Spark Your Curiosity & Inspire Your Reinvention Rebel Journey to get started today. 

Transcript

[music]

Barb: I feel like I've really become the true, authentic me, and have learned to live my life on purpose.

Wendy: Welcome to Reinvention Rebels, stories of brave and unapologetic women, 50 to 90 years young, who have boldly reimagined life on their own terms to find new purpose and possibilities. I'm your host, Wendy Battles. Ready for a dose of inspiration? Let's get to it.

Living your life on purpose, that's the guiding principle of my guest today, Barb Nangle. Barb embodies the characteristics of a Reinvention Rebel. She's brave, follows her passions, has clarity about her purpose, and unapologetically focuses on achieving her goals and dreams, and creates the space to make them happen. At 55, she's reimagined her life to create more joy, happiness, and love. But of course, it wasn't always that way. Life is a journey and Barb has done her fair share of navigating challenges to get where she is today through several life-changing events, from employment changes to her experience in 12 Step Recovery programs. She's channeled the ups and downs into new opportunities and a renewed enthusiasm for life. Barb Nangle, welcome to the Reinvention Rebels' guest chair.

Barb: Thank you so much, Wendy. I am really excited to be here, and I also feel honored and privileged, and I'm 57, not 55 just FYI, I claim it. I love getting older. I absolutely love getting older and I hate that people try to act like we shouldn't get older because that's what happens.

Wendy: I know. It's such a thing. I think in our society where people, especially with women, it feels like to me there's this whole thing about women and aging and how we should be, so to speak.

Barb: Right, yeah.

Wendy: But I know that there are many different ways to be. First of all, we know each other because we have this professional relationship being part of Toastmasters Club, The Yale Masters Club. So, I've known you for a few years through that endeavor and just in that short time, in probably two to three years, I've seen you change so much in really amazing ways from when you first came to the club and you had some ideas and you're going through some transitions that I want you to talk about to where you are now. I'd love to begin our conversation today by asking you what has prompted you to want to change. What was the driving force for that?

Barb: There's actually been two really dramatic changes in the last five plus years in my life, and the first of which is that I found myself in two 12 Step Recovery programs. I'm just going to briefly tell you how that happened. I had been involved in a project serving homeless people through my church, and I befriended a homeless guy whose name was Dan. One time during a snowstorm, I invited him to stay at my home, and he did. He stayed another time and another time, and then four months later, he was practically living at my house and I was talking about him to my therapist. And mid-sentence, I stopped and I went, do you think I need to go to Al-Anon? And she was like, yes. Somehow when I started looking up Al-Anon meetings, I came across the word, codependent, which I had never heard before, and it described me to a T.

Wendy: So, Barb, I'd like to stop you for just a moment because you mentioned a word that I believe some listeners probably may not be familiar with, and that is codependent. Codependent, can you explain to us what codependent means?

Barb: Sure, absolutely. I have to say that I was shocked when I learned this word myself. I was 52 years old and was shocked to learn that I had never heard it before. I'm reading from a book that is called Adult Children of Alcoholics, and I'm going to read a sentence of what they have to say about it. They say there are many definitions for codependence. However, the general consensus is that "Codependent people tend to focus on the wants and needs of others rather than their own." They go on to say, "By doing so, the codependent or adult child can avoid his or her own feelings of self-worth." A term that I was familiar with was the term enabling, which is still in use. It's not as popular as it used to be, but enabling is one of the constellations of behaviors that people who are codependent engage in. So, I did a lot of rescuing, I did a lot of fixing, and people who don't have well-established healthy boundaries tend to be codependent.

Wendy: Interesting. All right, that's so helpful to understand as we're talking about this and how this has played a role in your evolution.

Barb: What's really interesting is that I didn't even know that it was a thing. When I learned about it explained so many things about me. I remember saying to my therapist, I don't feel like I got hit in the head with a baseball by hearing this word and this concept. I feel like I got hit in the head with a planet because it was so shocking to me that as the introspective person that I am, I had never heard this, and well-read in personal development material. She said to me, no, Barb, I think for you, it is a unifying concept. It pulls together a whole bunch of things that you knew about yourself. At first, I thought she was saying it to make me feel better, but as time went on and I started familiarizing myself with codependence and the literature, I realized that she was right, it really was a unifying concept that explained much of the difficulties I'd had in my life.

Wendy: It feels like there's a certain amount of freedom that comes when you have this big epiphany.

Barb: Yeah. Absolutely.

Wendy: It comes together and you're thinking-- because I understand we don't know what we don't know till we of course know it, like in this case, but it's freeing to me to get that kind of clarity and have a deeper understanding of "I'm not crazy, yes, there is something," and now I can label it in a way that can help me understand it better.

Barb: Absolutely. Yeah. Agreed. I was astonished to understand that I was codependent, having been an incredibly introspective person. I've been in therapy my entire life since I was about 15. I'd write a gazillion self-help books, done workshops, workbooks, work groups, you name it. Just everything to just be better, get better. Understanding that I was codependent was just a huge shift in my thinking. It was absolutely a paradigm shift and that led me to 12-Step Recovery. And it actually led me to a second program that felt like a better fit for me. I eventually got led to an additional program that helped me deal with an addiction that I have. I can't mention the names of the specific programs because they're anonymous programs and I can't be seen as speaking for any one particular program, but I can talk about the 12 Steps of Recovery in general and the changes that have occurred in my life have been profound and deep.

I remember reading in a 12-Step Meditation journal one day the riverbed of my life has been dug up and rechanneled and that is exactly how I feel. I lived with low-level anxiety my entire life but I didn't know it until it was gone. I really had no boundaries and I have really well-established boundaries now. I had a sense of urgency at all times. I really just had no idea what I was doing in my life to create chaos and to exacerbate the chaos that was going on around me and through the 12 Steps of Recovery have really deeply and profoundly changed. At the same time, there's an essence of me that is still there. And I feel like I've really become the true authentic me and have learned to live my life on purpose. Again, I didn't know that I really wasn't doing these things until these changes happened and I could feel the difference between what things were like before and what they are now.

I think the best way to describe the change is that I am deeply comfortable in my own skin. I didn't know that I lived in fear my whole life. I was mired in fear before recovery, but I didn't know it. In fact, if you had asked me if I felt safe in the world, I would have said yes. I know that there are plenty of women out there who, for example, won't go out alone at night or won't go on this street or whatever. I was never like that. I always felt that the world was a safe place. But I now know that I lived in fear and much of that fear was, I was afraid to be judged by other people and I realize now that that was really, I was judging me and of course other people, so I kind of assumed other people were.

A huge insight, one of many from recovery is I'm going to be judged. Human beings are judging discerning creatures and so I will be judged. How about if I get judged for the actual me than some fake version of me? Because I realized I had all these different facades up and it led me to feel like I was fragmented but this was not something that I understood at the time. I can only see in retrospect. So, my journey has been from fragmented to whole. One of the pieces of my journey is that I actually started my own podcast and I call it Fragmented to Whole because it is a description of how I have experienced the process of 12 Steps of Recovery. The podcast is Life Lessons from 12 Step Recovery. About a little over two years into recovery, I got laid off after working for 19 years at Yale.

I was grant funded the entire time I was there, which is kind of miraculous to be grant funded for such a long period of time. I was a program coordinator for urban education programs. I'm a sociologist by training, I have a master's degree in sociology. Until I really got deeply into recovery, my main mission in life was to level the playing field, to bring the people who have been marginalized in our society and bring them to the center and give their voices a place. I felt like education was the place to do that. I was lucky enough when I got laid off that I had been at Yale for long enough to get eight months of salary continuation. That meant that I was able to take some time and really think about what I wanted to do. I started by volunteering for a colleague, and as a result of volunteering for her, I found my way into the world of entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation at Yale and within New Haven. I was like, "Oh my God, these are my people."

Just like people in recovery, people in that space are really focused on the fact that failure is not only an option, it's important. And learning to fail well, which to me means I recover from my failures quickly. Taking chances, taking risks, actually focusing on doing, not thinking. It doesn't matter what I think, it doesn't matter what I believe, it doesn't matter what I say. What matters is what I do. That is true both in recovery and in the world of entrepreneurship. I ended up having someone who I had been volunteering for, who really worked with helping entrepreneurs launch, say to me, tell me why you don't have your own coaching and consulting business, Barb? Because that's what you do. It wasn't the first time I hadn't thought about it. I ended up starting my own coaching and consulting business, which is called Higher Power Coaching & Consulting.

I'm still really figuring out exactly who my target market is. What I've honed in on is I absolutely want to work with people who know and want to change, they just don't know how. I'm especially gifted at working with people who have entrenched patterns of dysfunctional behavior because those are the kinds of changes I had. The other thing is, I didn't know how dysfunctional my life was. That's an incredibly long story, as brief as I can get it.

Wendy: [laughs] Well, you talked about so many different key things in your life and part of what I hear is that it's been an ongoing journey.

Barb: Mm-hmm, yeah.

Wendy: You didn't just get to where you are today and your ability to help people that have been on a similar journey very quickly. Part of it was your own self-discovery, recognizing these patterns of your behavior, recognizing how you were in the world, recognizing also that you wanted to change like you had a desire. Like, I don't want to live my life in this fearful way anymore. I want my life to be different.

Barb: Yeah, well, I don't even know that I recognized that I was fearful, but I will say you asked what's the impetus for the change. Well, the impetus for the change and recovery was what we call in recovery hitting bottom. I hit a codependent bottom. Having a homeless person live in your home is not something a normal person does. I was able to look back at all my previous relationships, especially romantic, and see that they were codependent, but so were all my friendships. I had a 19-year codependent relationship with my boss. And so, this was a pattern. Seeing that this was a pattern and that it was possible to stop is really what got me to be dedicated to recovery. In terms of the impetus for the change in my career, it was getting laid off and which felt like divine intervention, because in the back of my mind, as long as I can remember, I have known I will write a book and I will be a consultant of some kind. No idea what kind and no idea what the book is going to be about, but I always knew that. And here I am. I am a writer now. Haven't written a book yet, but that's coming. I am a coach and a consultant, and I have a podcast, and I am living my life day to day in a fashion that works for me.

Wendy: Over time, you've been able to really get focused on what you truly want.

Barb: Exactly.

Wendy: I'm really reimagining that. I think that one of the things I talk about with people who I think are Reinvention Rebels is that, well, they have many qualities. Two of the qualities that really stick out to me is that there are people that are brave and people that are unapologetic. I see you as being both of those things. It takes a lot of courage for us to think differently about our life. It's very easy.

Barb: Absolutely.

Wendy: I've been in that space where it's very easy for me to be in denial, for me to look the other way, for me to overlook that behavior about myself that I don't particularly like or blame it on other people. I think it takes a certain amount of courage to really become more self-aware. When I talk about being a Reinvention Rebel, one of the things I talk about is that I think that there are three ingredients that in my mind a Reinvention Rebel possesses or three things that they do. That's the path to them figuring this out. One is reflection. Two is then reimagining your life. And then three is restarting. So, the three Rs, reflect, reimagine, restart. You strike me as someone who is very self-reflective. You mentioned also earlier introspective. How has reflection played a part in you reinventing yourself?

Barb: The first thing that comes to my mind is that this coming week is the 20th anniversary of me keeping a gratitude journal. July 23, 2000, was the first day that I kept a gratitude journal and I've done it practically every day ever since. If I haven't there's been a very good reason. I started by writing five things for which I'm grateful. What I do every night is go back and look through my day and I pull out the things for which I'm grateful. It's been absolutely revolutionary for me because it doesn't matter how crappy things are, you can always find something to be grateful for. So, there's that kind of reflection. I would say since I was about 24, I have been on a personal growth journey. I think that was when I was first exposed to personal development and personal growth and realizing there's a whole industry and literature out there about all that. I've had this insatiable desire to grow and to change and to better, etc.

One of the ways that my nightly gratitude journaling has transformed is that in the 12 Steps of Recovery, one of the things that we do it starts in step 10 is we take a daily inventory of ourselves and ask ourselves, where have we been selfish or self-seeking or resentful, etc. I have created an inventory somewhat based on what the literature tells me, but also based on areas that I know have been problematic for me. So, for example, one of the things that came out of my recovery was understanding. I had a lot of unrealistic expectations about myself, other human beings, the world, the education system, the political system, whatever. If I want to have those, I can have them, but I'm going to be really dissatisfied and unhappy.

One of the things on my inventory is, "Did I have unrealistic expectations today?" What this does for me is it helps me nip things in the bud. It also sensitizes me to these issues so I can see them coming, so that I'll be like, okay, this is the kind of situation where I might go in and have unrealistic expectations. So, I'm going to pull those. I'm going to rain those in right now. I kind of think of it like this. "When I did the 12 Steps of Recovery, I went into my deep, dark, dank, nasty basement. I cleaned it all out. I sandblasted it, I painted it, I furnished it, I decorated it and now when I do my inventory every night, I go down and I sweep the basement every night." That way there's no longer going to be any build-up.

Wendy: I love it.

Barb: So, this has been really important. By far the best and most important gift of my recovery is learning my part in things. This is a language that we use in 12 Step Recovery. Understanding my part in things, seeing that I have always had a part in things but didn't see it causes me when I'm upset to reflect and say, "Okay, what could I have done differently that would have made that turn out in a different way?"

Wendy: The first part being the gratitude journal. I know that in the past I've kept gratitude journals. When I've done it consistently, I found it to be very powerful.

Barb: Absolutely.

Wendy: To have a much deeper appreciation for my life, for all the things that I have. But then I also know that I can be inconsistent and I'm in my downward cycle right now [chuckles]. Even though I love the idea and I think because I have so many different rituals I do, to kind of keep me up and in a high life condition. I keep thinking I'd like to build that in as well. But I really appreciate though that one, you've done it for 20 years.

Barb: Yeah, yeah.

Wendy: Amazing and very impressive. I see how it makes a difference in being able to look at your life, but I also like this daily idea you have at the end of the day, reflecting on not just what you're grateful for, "But how did my day go? Did I have these unrealistic expectations?" Because that happens all the time, I think things will take an hour and it takes 5 hours and I'm all upset that it took so long.

Barb: Right. Or you think that the recording studio is going to work smoothly the very first time that you use it and It doesn't.

[laughter]

Wendy: Exactly, make these crazy ideas that like, "Yes, it's going to all be perfectly smooth and fit together and I'm going to be in the flow and then write the things of life that happens." I love how you use reflection as this powerful tool and that you use it all the time.

Barb: Yeah, I do want to add that I also add things that I do well because I think that's important. As someone who for many years had a lot of negative self-talk, I did a lot to clean that up many many years ago, but it still rears its ugly head from time to time. I always look for something loving I did for myself, which is often some kind of self-care, like yoga or walking or something. What is something new that I've done? It doesn't have to be brand new that I've never done before, but it has to be something that I couldn't and wouldn't have done before recovery. That I'm always focused on how much better my life is now. I don't think it would be possible even if I didn't do that practice, for me to not recognize how much better my life is, but that ensures that I've always got my eyes on this is way better than it used to be. Like, my worst days in recovery are way better than my best days before recovery.

I just want to add one thing about the consistency piece that you said. There's another quote, I love quotes. "Consistency in small things is no small thing." A daily practice of writing five things you're grateful for takes maybe a minute. If you were to dedicate 1 minute every day, so that's 365 minutes a year, your life would be revolutionized. So, are you willing to do that? It's not so much the 1 minute, it's the 1 minute daily. That's the problem for people. It's the consistency piece. Showing up for myself is what I do now. I take care of myself so that I can be helpful to other people. It's just like the oxygen mask in the airplane. You have to put the oxygen mask on yourself first. If you're passed out, you can't help other people.

Wendy: Exactly. You're in service to yourself first, to be of service to others.

Barb: Absolutely.

Wendy: I completely agree, because that's like me in the morning, the first thing I do is I get up and I do my Buddhist practice and then I always exercise. I do not start the day without 20 to 30 minutes of exercise. That is like the-- [crosstalk].

Barb: Good for you.

Wendy: I start my day in this positive way with the endorphins. I think for women, especially, as we age, there's this challenge with our bodies so many of us are very stuck on, because you mentioned negative self-talk and how you were able to overcome that. I want to come back to that because I think so many women are stuck in negative self-talk. I think the negative self-talk can get worse as we age and things start to change in ways we don't particularly like. It's hard to accept that things are changing and our society doesn't look kindly on those things.

Barb: Hmm, yeah.

Wendy: They don't lift up aging women and appreciate their wrinkles or their body changes. We see that it's bad and it's not a good thing. How did you change your self-talk? You mentioned that you were able several years ago to change yourself-talk. How are you able to do that? What advice would you give to our listeners who are thinking, I'm 60 or I'm 70 and I want to reimagine my life, but I don't like some of the things that I see?

Barb: I want to start by saying it is literally never too late. I know a man who came into recovery at the age of 69. He is now 75 years old. To hear him tell it, he was a complete jerk before recovery, and he's one of the kindest souls I've ever met. So, it's never too late. I think that if you have negative self-talk, which most people do, it is incredibly important to get rid of that because that means you have this backstory playing constantly. The way that I came to know that I had negative self-talk was I read words on the page of a book that somebody said, this is what my clients say to themselves. I went, "Oh, my gosh, I didn't even know that I said it." It started with first even just realizing that I have this negative self-talk.

At first, it was just like, "Oops, there I go again, and just noticing it." So, then the task is to stop. So, I think of it like this. "I have a well and I've been poisoning it my entire life with this negative self-talk. I got to stop putting the poison in and that's good. The well will purify eventually. But If I really want to purify the well, I need to put some medicine in there. And that's what affirmations are. I know that there are many people who poopoo affirmations, who think that they're woo-woo, fine for you, they work for me because I have been programming myself to tell myself horrible things for decades. I want to reverse the effects of that. I have many affirmations that I would say. The one that I made up for myself that works for me came from this idea that I had that I was too much, too loud, too sarcastic, I was too fat, too blah, blah, blah to this, to that. My affirmation is this "I am just the right amount of everything."

Unlike many people who have negative self-talk, and they talk about often I'm not enough. Mine was I'm a little on the grandiose side. I'm a little on the arrogant side, which I really just see as the opposite side of the coin of I'm not enough. It's basically I'm not the right amount of something. I'm not right. I'm inherently flawed. Well, guess what people? You were created on purpose by love, in love, for love. That is why you are here. Like, the fact that you exist means you are enough. You just don't believe it. And so, start telling yourself things. So, first you notice that you're saying horrible things to yourself. Second, you stop. And third, you replace them. And the thing about affirmations is, you don't have to believe them for them to work, so you don't have to believe it.

But what you do have to do is be consistent about them. So, I love Brooke Castillo. I don't know if any of you know of her, but she's amazing, and she gives us really-- this is a perfect example. Let's say you've always hated your body. I hate my body, hate my body, hate my body. To go from I hate my body till I love my body might not be realistic for you. It doesn't mean you have to believe it, but for you to be consistent about it. If you're not going to be consistent because you say, I love my body, try a neutral statement like, I have a body. You scaffold your way up to being able to say, I love my body. When I started doing mirror work and looking in the mirror and saying, I love you just the way you are, Barb, I would cry. It was painful.

Now I don't do it all the time, but I occasionally when I walk by the mirror, I look in the mirror, I'm like, I love you, Barb. And I mean it, it's genuine. I just think that the gift of self-love is so profound because now I'm full of love, and that's what I bring to the world, as opposed to being full of anger and fear and hatred and frustration and shame and guilt, which I used to launch out at the world. Now I don't go to the world to try to get those needs met, to get my healing. I go to the world to give. Because I'm full of love that I gave to myself.

Wendy: That is such a huge shift and I think that's something for so many women that we have to kind of unpack and be willing to get into it with ourselves. To be able to recreate ourselves or reinvent ourselves in a way that is joyful for us that's inspiring to us. I feel like we have to be willing to do this work of this self-reflection, which I know is different for everybody.

Barb: Of course. Yeah.

Wendy: But it really resonated with me when you talked about this notion of baby steps, baby steps towards self-love, it's not like one day you're like, "Oh, I want to love myself more." And then like two weeks later, I'm there over quite some time. I like that idea of just kind of taking one step at a time. You start off really simply in a way that feels not so charged, and then you kind of take it up another level and get more comfortable appreciating ourselves. I feel like we need to appreciate ourselves.

Barb: Absolutely.

Wendy: Right, and not necessarily have to rely on someone else to do it for us. What if we don't have a parent or a friend or a partner that can do that for us? Well, we can do that for ourselves. This isn't about we have to get that validation from someone else. I think that we can apply that self-love.

Barb: Yeah.

Wendy: We can build that over time because I think that if we can do that through this process of reflection, of really getting to know ourselves, what I like to call an inside job.

Barb: Yes, absolutely.

Wendy: So much of this is the work I've done on myself, which, just like you, has taken a lot of time to get to where I am to feel more positive about myself. In that space of feeling more positive, I can see new possibilities. I can see, when I feel more confident, what's possible for me. And that's what I love about you're like, I'm going to go for it kind of a person. I'm going to go for it and make that happen.

[Reinvention Rebels Theme]

Wendy: Hey, Reinvention Rebels. Want to have Reinvention Rebels inspiration delivered to your inbox? Head over to reinventionrebels.com and sign up for my news and notes.

You've reimagined your life. You mentioned that in some ways it was serendipity that you lost your job. That created the circumstance for you to have these new opportunities, for someone to say to you, "Oh, for you to volunteer and then to start thinking about entrepreneurship and to then become a coach. That's a total reimagining your life after 19 years of working on these-- funded by grants to now have this life that you've really very intentionally created.

Barb: Yeah.

Wendy: What's been the biggest challenge of that? Well, let's start with this. What's been the greatest joy of reimagining your life?

Barb: So, you said something a moment ago. I don't know that you use the word choice, but that's really what you were talking about. I would say another one of the gigantic gifts of recovery is that I have choices. What that means is that there were things in my life that I was choosing that I didn't understand were a choice. I thought I had to do them, but they were, in fact, choices. There were things in my life that I wasn't choosing that I didn't even know I had cut off from possibility for me. Then there were things that I wasn't choosing and I was very clear that I wasn't choosing. I would say that what was really helpful to me was that one of the reasons I really appreciated working at Yale, which was honestly a fantastic place to work for my professional development, for my security.

I had worked a lot of jobs before my career at Yale, and so I often didn't have benefits of any kind, and they have an incredible benefits package. What I believed was that if I have this security, this financial security, the benefits, the retirement package, the paycheck, all that kind of stuff, then I will have arrived. What recovery showed me was the thing I was seeking, the security that I was seeking through my employer. Even though I had security through employment, I didn't have the state of being that I was seeking. When I got into recovery, I had it. It's not my employer and my paycheck and my benefits that are going to give me the kind of security that I want. For me, it's my higher power. Now. I was a spiritual person before I came into recovery, but my spiritual life was nothing like it is now.

I have a very deep and rich spiritual life and that connection to something greater than me that I work very hard at maintaining. Well, I say hard, it's easy. I do it very consistently. But understanding that I have this level of security that no one or nothing can ever take away from me has allowed me to make choices in my life in areas that I wouldn't be for. I'm willing to take risks, because I know I am going to be okay no matter what my day-to-day life looks like, no matter what events happen in my life, I'm going to be okay.

Wendy: So, it sounds like your greatest joy is really this freedom from fear.

Barb: [crosstalk] And freedom of choice. Yes. Freedom of choice and freedom from fear, yes.

Wendy: Those are so powerful.

Barb: Absolutely.

Wendy: I think we all can live sometimes our life in fear or feel like we don't have choices.

Barb: Right.

Wendy: Part of that is what you've talked about is changing your mindset.

Barb: Exactly. [crosstalk] self-talk matters.

Wendy: Right, and It's all to me, ultimately about our mindset, about I can create a reinvention rebel mindset.

Barb: Yes.

Wendy: That I have choices, that I can choose to live my life vibrantly as I age, that I could be 87 like my mom, who has this incredibly vibrant, active life. And that is a choice or I could choose to say, "Oh you know what? My friends are all dying and there's not much left for me to do. I'm not as mobile as I used to be and I'm just going to kind of give up." But we have the choice to go either way or somewhere in between.

Barb: Right.

Wendy: The people I know who are Reinvention Rebels, they choose this mindset of reflection, of seeing new possibilities, of a willingness to take a risk, to see what's on the other side. I could live this way, or I could put my feelers out, see what happens, and see what might be possible if I allow myself that opportunity to take that risk. I think that's where it comes in that like Reinvention Rebels are brave. As you look back at this journey you've been on for these many years, what would you say is the bravest thing that you've done Barb?

Barb: I have been thinking about this and my first thought was setting boundaries. Though that is what I have done, it's really deciding to take the reins of my life and live my life on purpose, which is a way of setting boundaries. To me, boundaries are me saying, this is how I want to live my life. I make the decisions about how my life runs, and other people are either going to come along or I might lose them in my life. I have lost some people, but I've gained people who are on board with this new vision of Barb, which are the kind of people that I want to have in my life. I would say the bravest thing is really this introspection in saying, this thing isn't working for me before anymore. This relationship isn't working anymore. This habit isn't working anymore. I want to live my life on purpose and I want to live a God-centered life.

I mentioned earlier that my mission had always been to level the playing field. It's not that that my mission has gone away, but my main mission now is to be of service to myself, to God, and to my fellows. The best way that I can do that is to take care of myself and to stay connected to my higher power and also tap into the flow of life. I feel like a lot of what I was doing before recovery was resisting what was happening. If you think of the metaphor of life being a river, I'm now floating. I'm not swimming against the tide, I'm not trying to build a dock, I'm not trying to build a dam, I'm not trying to build a levee. I'm just floating and allowing the flow of life and taking like, "Oh, look at this beautiful piece of fruit hanging over where I am floating by, I'm going to grab that piece of fruit." I'm not going to be like, I don't have what's on the other shore. Do you know what I mean?

Wendy: I do, I do, yeah. I've been in that place before where I've been resisting things and I noticed that life flows so much more easily if I can let go, have faith and let go, which I know is hard and it's often easier said than done. When sometimes things don't look good or we're very challenged or when we're in a situation where we feel very challenged and we just see the other side of that possibility. Of course, always easier said than done, always easier to give someone else advice or coach them than to apply that to ourselves. There is something amazing when we are willing to let go and trust and see what unfolds. And I completely agree with you. I also heard you say, too, that this whole idea of the bravest thing you did was your willingness to potentially lose things by changing your life. Like to me, that is intensely brave, knowing that what we think of as security, which gives us often comfort we might lose. The bravery to do that when we know there's something else, we could gain that's more important or more impactful to our life to me is really key.

Barb: Yeah, absolutely. When you said brave earlier it reminded me in the fall of 2018, I went on a six-week solo road trip in a camper van.

Wendy: I remember that.

Barb: During the time I was there, I went on a retreat, and there were two other women who were alone in RVs, and I was like, "Ah, they're so brave." And I was like, "Wait a minute. I'm doing that too. Because the thing people said to me was brave and courage. And I was always like, whatever. Now, even though I could have never taken that road trip before recovery, it took me seeing that quality in other women to see it in myself. That's one of the reasons why I love that you're doing this podcast because I think people will see themselves or they will have models for how they could see themselves.

Wendy: We all need some degree of inspiration.

Barb: Absolutely.

Wendy: We get in our own way so often, so being able to be inspired and say, "Oh, well, if Barb can get in a camper and go on a trip by herself for six weeks, I bet I could go away for a week."

Barb: Right.

Wendy: Just by myself and stay in a hotel?

Barb: Yeah.

Wendy: [crosstalk] -over. I think that because I remember when you were going on that trip and you were planning it and you were telling us, well, I'm not going to be here for six weeks because I'm going to be going on this journey. And I thought, wow, that is awesome. I love that. That is so empowering. I think the older we get as women, the more that we need to do things, whatever those things are, it's different for everybody, but we need to do things that will make us feel empowered like that we can do anything because if we can do something like that or whatever the thing is that might stretch us but can give us like again, it's this example of the bravery that leads to all these other insights and wisdom that you got, but by just being able to see, wow, I am like them. I am brave.

Barb: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Wendy: That self-discovery is awesome.

Barb: It really is. I'm awesome.

Wendy: You are girl.

Barb: You know what? Actually, no. I am "Flawsome." I learned that word early in recovery. It means I'm flawed and I'm awesome. They're not mutually exclusive. I am flawed in my awesomeness, and I'm awesome in my flawedness I think that people hear that and they often feel like, "Oh, my God, that's such a gift," because I mentioned at the very beginning my greatest fear was being judged. What it was I didn't want people to see my flaws. Well, here's the thing. I am flawed and so are you and so is everybody else. I judged other people for their flaws and I judged me for mine. I was going to be damned if I was going to let anybody see my flaws. Now because I would be riddled with shame and now I'm like, "Oops, sorry. you know, I made a mistake, I apologize." I don't get flooded with shame the way that I used to and because I've let myself off the hook because I'm flawsome, I let other people off the hook too.

Wendy: That is brilliant, "Flawsome. Oh, my gosh." Audience, did you hear that? "Flawsome" 

Barb: Yes.

Wendy: I love that. And I love this embracing that we're all complex beings.

Barb: Mm, absolutely,

Wendy: We are so imperfectly perfect.

Barb: Yes.

Wendy: I think I may be perfectly imperfect. Think about it. And that we can have both sides, though, and still be amazing.

Barb: Right.

Wendy: I think that's great. I think that will probably resonate with a lot of people, this notion of-- the complexity of all of us, especially as women, the duality that exists. That is what exists in our very complex lives as women especially because we're often doing let's say men are doing a lot, but women, though, they really take care of things. Like, if you want something done, I would say have a woman do it. Have one of your friends do it. Have someone do it that can get it done.

Barb: Ask a busy person, they get [crosstalk] done.

Wendy: Busy people get shit done in an amazing way. You know that's right?

Barb: Right, yeah.

Wendy: So, Barb, you are someone I admire because I feel like you are unapologetic in a kickass way. By that, I mean you are so clear about your boundaries around things. I know you said earlier that you weren't always clear in that way.

Barb: Oh, no, [chuckles].

Wendy: It's taken time. But what I hear women do all the time is apologize for lots and lots of different things, for what they're wearing, for not doing this. They say sorry a lot. I feel like we're socialized to do that. What advice do you have for people that want to become Reinvention Rebels? They want to really take on this idea of being brave and unapologetic and loving their life as they age. What advice would you give to some of our listeners who want to build their unapologetic muscles?

Barb: So, that's a really good question. I think the first thing I feel the need to say is unapologetic doesn't mean that you can be a jerk to people. It simply means you're living your life the way you want to. For me, boundaries are a really good example of that. A lot of people ask me, like, how did you get boundaries? It's all of the stuff that I did in step work. It's a whole bunch of things that went into it. But I would say the core of me being able to establish, maintain, and uphold my boundaries is that I care more what I think of me than what other people think of me. Now, that doesn't mean I don't care what other people think of me, of course, I do. I'm a human. I care less that they like me than that I like me. An example is I was the consummate people pleaser before recovery.

This is a very good indicator that you have no boundaries if you're a people pleaser, which means you bend over backwards to get other people to like you. When I first came into recovery, I was like, I'm really clear that there's this continuum of helpful behavior where on one end, we've got really unhealthy dysfunctional rescuing behavior, and on the other hand, we've got very healthy, kindly, helpful behavior. I know the difference between the two ends. It's in the middle. Like, where do we switch over from helpful to rescuing? Somebody said to me, it has to do with your motives. Like, why are you doing it? Are you doing the things so that people will like you? And I was like, no. That was because at the beginning, I didn't understand that I was either doing things to get people to like me or to think a certain thing about me.

Like, I am helpful, I am kind, I am smart, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Once I could see that I actually did have an outcome in mind, which was, you will like me, you will think I'm helpful. You'll think I'm smart or whatever, then that question of motives was really helpful to me. Until I could see my own motives that wasn't a helpful question. And so why am I doing something? I realize that I was actually willing to be dishonest. I was willing to say, "Oh, absolutely, I'm happy to do that," when, "No, I wasn't." Then, honestly, I'd probably be mad at you for asking me, because I said yes. What that means was I cared more about the chance that you would like me than I did about my own personal integrity of being an honest woman. Now I care more what I think of me.

I want to be a woman of integrity and do what I say and have all of my principles and values in line and live up to them as best I can. That is more important to me than getting you to like me. That's what I mean when I say that. I think that if you don't like yourself, it's really hard to be unapologetic and kind about being unapologetic. I think you don't have to be a jerk about it, but you have to decide where the boundaries of your life are going to be. You're the one that has to enforce it. Boundaries are not to control other people, they're for you and I would say, the most common question I get about boundaries, essentially, is how do I stop other people from doing stuff? You don't. You can't. Your boundaries are not for them, they're for you. If they can't stop doing it, then you stop being around them, or you limit your time around them. You know that sort of thing. So, I hope that answers your question.

Wendy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that for many of us it's a work in progress.

Barb: Yeah. Absolutely.

Wendy: We need to stop apologizing for whatever it is we apologize for whether it's in our own resistance or the fact that we messed up on something. It could be anything, but I think that there are amazing women who are older who, like you, have that notion of, I'm just going to-- by taking care of myself, I can take care of other people, I can help other people.

Barb: Absolutely, yeah.

Wendy: And having those boundaries and being really clear. I take much better care of myself and then I'm much more available for other people to be of service.

Barb: Absolutely.

Wendy: I think that this being unapologetic, it doesn't have to be, as you said, in some kind of nasty way or arrogant way. I mean, it can just be being our true selves.

Barb: Yeah.

Wendy: Right, and embracing that, I think is ultimately what that means.

Barb: I think also discovering that it's not just embracing it. There are, of course, some aspects of me that are the same as they always have been, but I didn't allow myself to be exactly who I wanted to be because I was afraid of what other people thought. Some of it is discovering your real identity, not just embracing it.

Wendy: Yeah, because I think you have to discover it first before you can embrace it. That's like a key step. All of this is sort of theme. A lot of what we've talked about today is this discovery, the willingness to allow ourselves to reflect on ourselves, discover new things, begin to get insights. When we can do that then we can make different choices or see different possibilities, which is what Reinvention Rebels are all about, seeing new possibilities for our lives as we age in these really exciting and juicy ways where we're truly being ourselves.

Barb: Yeah.

Wendy: I love that. I love that. So, where can people find you? You are doing all these amazing things. You mentioned you've got a website. Well, of course, you got a podcast. I know that people that are in a podcast like to always discover other podcasts. What is your podcast called and how can people-- I mean, we'll have it in the show notes.

Barb: Right, okay. So, it's called Fragmented to Whole: Life Lessons from 12 Step Recovery. It's available on just about any podcast outlet. They're all 20 minutes or less, and they're based on very specific topics like acceptance, gratitude, forgiveness, overcoming negative thought loops. I also have a website, it's higherpowercoachingandconsulting.com, and you can find me on Instagram at @higherpowercoaching, barbchat.net. People can jump onto my calendar for a free 20 minutes consultation if they want.

Wendy: One piece of inspiration you want to leave all of my listeners with about being a Reinvention Rebel.

Barb: I think loving yourself is the key to everything because when you love yourself, you're full of love and you have that to give to the world.

Wendy: Hey, amazing listener. Loving what you're hearing. If the Reinvention Rebels Podcast, has you feeling downright rebellious and ready to embrace your inner reinvention rebel, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast on your favorite podcast platform.

Hey, rebel if this episode inspired you to think about what's possible in your life, I'll share a little secret. Any of us can reinvent ourselves, no matter where we are in our lives, any age, any stage. We just have to decide to get started. Here's a super simple way for you to get going with your reinvention dreams. Download my audio, five questions to spark your curiosity and inspire your reinvention journey. I share five key questions that will spur your thinking, help you uncover your dreams, and motivate you to take action. Because if not now, when? Details in the show notes. Let's get inspired together.

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